


Foolishly

by LunchLich



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Blood and Violence, Dalish Origin, Not Beta Read, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29876091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunchLich/pseuds/LunchLich
Summary: He's no baby halla, no longer naive, no longer white-haired like their pelts with his head all caked with blood and dirt.
Kudos: 3





	Foolishly

**Author's Note:**

> 1.5k words of a 14-year-old Dalish kid wrecking some human's shit after he gets ambushed.
> 
> aka -Hanin's Big Problem With Humans

Branches snapped beneath his bare feet, the sound resonating around him, barely heard over his heavy breath and pounding heart. The dagger gripped with white knuckles wasn't his own, nor was most of the blood seeping off his leathers and soaking into the green woolen trousers he wore.

Foolishly, the Shem hunters that had ambushed him only trapped one of his wrists, pressed between the sole of one of their boots and the cold dirt he lay on. 

Foolishly, they were surprised when a  _ stupid _ ,  _ filthy knife-ear  _ outwitted them. Out of the atrocities they'd committed, perhaps underestimating him was the most insulting. They hadn't seen it coming when he snatched a dagger from the bushy-bearded Shem’s belt and drove it into the side of his neck. Hanin used the leverage from his legs to push him off with a kick before he was trapped beneath the man’s dead weight. 

He swung the blade to slash the calf of the Shem pinning his wrist. The scream he let out as the small elf tore through his tendon filled him with such  _ satisfaction. _ The other man had been dead too quickly to give anything more than a choking gurgle of blood. 

Hanin hopped to his feet, legs shaky with pain and adrenaline. One man dead, another unable to stand, two more with scowls on their faces. He could run if they weren't both equipped with bows. He'd either be shot dead like game or he'd lead these men back to his clan without a warning, and they could kill  _ anyone _ . 

They came at him, big lumbering oafs swinging their massive arms in an attempt to snatch him from where he stood.

Foolishly, they believed themselves faster than he was.  _ Quick children _ , he thought as he ducked beneath a muscular arm,  _ was quite misleading _ . The branches prove themselves to be more hazardous, tripping him as he dodged. As he fell face-first into the leaves, he tightened his hold on the dagger. He won't let himself be disarmed.

Foolishly, one of the men hauled him back up by his free hand, leaving himself open for when Hanin stabbed the blade into his neck as well. He hardly has time to pull it out and watch the blood fountain from the wound when the last Shem wrapped his hairy arms around his chest, trapping him with his back against his armored torso.

Hanin's wild kicking and screaming do no good, the man's grip only tightened painfully around his ribs until he felt a crack. He feels like a baby halla trapped in the maw of a wolf. He slashed clumsily upwards, praying to Andruil that he can draw enough blood, can inflict enough pain, to loosen the grip. 

He’d be killed, without a doubt. They may have had mercy on him, had he not fought, had he not killed two of the men. "Fenedhis!" He swore when the dagger became too slick with blood and his hand slipped to grasp the blade itself. It fell to the ground with only a soft rustle as it tumbled into the leaves, and Hanin was sure that it was the sound of his demise. 

Unarmed and trapped, he thought of what an animal may do to escape. And so he flailed, and he hit, and he bit. He sunk his teeth into the flesh of the man’s arm like he's trying to take a bite out of him. He's no baby halla, no longer naive, no longer white-haired like their pelts with his head all caked with blood and dirt.

He remembered stories of Shems slowly dying, impaled on a halla's antlers after they tried to capture her. You cannot make a halla do something against her will - not without a fight. 

The bite and a clumsy punch to the man's nose are what gets him to loosen his grip enough for Hanin to wriggle out of it. He dropped to his feet and felt the ground for the dagger. His hand stung, bleeding around its handle. Even so, he lunged for the back of the remaining Shem's leg. The man stumbled over like a falling tree.

Foolishly, the hunter's armor left too many weak points open. Before he could push himself up to his knees, the blade was buried in the back of his neck.

Foolishly, they'd thought to attack a Dalish child who intended them no harm, who was afraid,  _ who had tried to run.  _ They’d attacked a boy raised to be a hunter, whose knack for getting into trouble and small stature won him many lessons in protecting himself.

Hanin pulled the blade from his neck, using a foot on the man's back for leverage. 

He stood, only shaking and breathing, for a few moments. Everything that should hurt right now didn't. The gash in his palm felt like a dull ache, and the strain in his muscles felt distant. He so desperately wanted,  _ needed,  _ to cry, and yet the tears wouldn't come. 

Everything was a dull throbbing, just beneath the surface. Physically and emotionally.

The man whose tendons he'd slashed, the one whose boot left a forming bruise on his arm, still lay whimpering with soft pleas for his life. Yet when Hanin cried out, he had shown no mercy.

Hanin marched over to him, the ground beneath him damp, mud created by the still-warm blood. "Ar tu na'lin emma mi." He growled at the man, rage boiling deep within his gut at the pitiful look on the man’s face. With a whispered prayer to Mythal that this was justice served, he slit his throat, and he ran.

He hadn't known how far he had wandered. No one came when he screamed. 

Branches whacked at his shins and arms and tore his trousers even more than they already were. He still had a fair amount of daylight on his side, luckily, as to not be taken by  _ real  _ wolves this time, rather than figurative ones. He still grasped the stolen dagger against his palm like it was the only thing keeping him alive. It had been earlier, after all. 

He fell on his face a few times. Each time he scrambled back to his aching feet and kept running, rubbing dirt from his face that had stuck to sticky blood. The last time he fell was into a clearing after tripping on an exposed root.

He heard a gasp in front of him, followed by a shrill call of, "Mahariel?!"

It had been Merrill who ran to his side as he pulled himself back up on now limping legs. Her book was discarded by the tree she'd been reading under. He wished he'd stayed with her today when she'd asked. "Are you alright- clearly you aren't- what  _ happened  _ to you?" The horror in her eyes told him he looked even worse than he felt.

He didn’t doubt it. Covered in blood and dirt and debris, clothes torn, with a dagger that certainly wasn't his gripped in his hand like an extension of his arm. "Shemlens." He answered dryly, and when the girl opened her mouth to question him further, he interrupted. "Slaughtered. Most of it isn't my blood." 

He dragged himself towards the clan, further out past the clearing where he could see the sails of the aravels. Merrill followed behind, babbling sentiments of worry and further questions. Hanin's ears ring too loudly for him to pay attention. 

Time seemed to stop when he wandered into the camp. Bright-eyed children younger than him being told stories around the fire stop to gawk at him with their mouths agape, fear on their faces. Hunters tanning hides neglect their project. Men carrying wood in from the other side of the forest drop their haul and jog over to see what was going on. 

Hanin paid no attention to them, only stopping in his tracks when Ashalle poked her head out from her tent. He cried, then, a soft whine of 'Mamae' passing his lips. He surprised himself how much he sounded like a child even after being caught like a rabbit in a bear trap, even after stabbing four men to death. 

The blood-coated dagger clattered to the ground again as his adopted mother rushed to him, holding her sobbing son against her chest despite the red that began to stain her clothes. 

Foolishly, Hanin had believed the dull ache would last only until it faded completely. He hadn’t considered that it would fade in and out like tides on the shore, from a sharp and painful hurt to being so faint he nearly forgot about it. 

Foolishly, Hanin had believed it was done and over with. The nightmares, for the most part, had faded to the back of his mind. Noises in the woods or a sudden hand on his back certainly startled him easier than they should, but that was the extent of it. He’d grown accustomed to the push and pull of the pain. Until a _Shem_ calling himself Duncan placed a hand on his shoulder six years later, and the elf bristled, hand going to rest on the stolen dagger at his side. Despite the friendly, sympathetic smile on the man’s face, Hanin sneered. An outstretched hand from a human may as well be a bear trap, and he would never be a trapped animal again. 

**Author's Note:**

> 'Ar tu na'lin emma mi' = 'I will see your blood on my blade'. Yay!
> 
> I think this is the first fight scene I've written without giving up on? wtf


End file.
